B Hepworth Wipes Away Costs with SAP Business One

B Hepworth and Co. is a global leader in the manufacturing of windscreen wiper systems for the marine, train and commercial industries.

The UK-based company boasts over 70 years of experience in the specialist design and production of performance wipers for high-speed boats, trains and coaches.

Around four years ago, the company deployed SAP Business One to manage each of its departments from one integrated solution. SAP partner IIS supports the company to maximize value from its IT investment and reduce costs. John Hayward, systems manager, B Hepworth, explains how the reporting capabilities in SAP Business One have not only provided greater insight into production data, but also saved the company money in the process.

What system did you have in place prior to the implementation of SAP Business One?

Before SAP Business One we had a Unix system that we used for our business management solution. It was a fully integrated solution that was used across the business. We moved to SAP Business One because our former software was no longer due to be supported and it was coming to the end of its life.

How has B Hepworth benefited from using SAP Business One?

We’ve benefitted from the fact that the move from one solution to another has been seamless. With the implementation of SAP Business One, we’ve been able to maintain all of the accounting, sales, CRM and manufacturing functions from a single solution.

The reporting within SAP Business One is really good. Crystal Reports provide greater insight into our data and tells our manufacturing director at the end of the day what his invoices are and what his arrears are. These tailored reports in SAP Business One are really valuable to us as a business.

What about the scalability of your manufacturing operations? Have these increased?

If we were still using our former system the solution probably wouldn’t cope with the scale of our manufacturing operations. But there are other little things that we’ve noticed improvements in. Crystal Reports are an improvement on what we previously had. It’s easier for us to write reports and query reports than it was previously. In fact, I can do this myself, whereas previously we had to use an external consultant. This has resulted in cost savings.

How has SAP Business One helped you manage your inventory? What improvements have you experienced?

Although we haven’t been able to get any additional information into our inventory than what we had before, we’ve found that we’re able to access this data more conveniently and run more reports against this.

What about overall levels of efficiency and productivity?

We’ve noticed that we’ve become more efficient with SAP Business One – just because the solution runs quicker than what we had before. In fact, we’ve recently had to upgrade our server to handle the amount of data that we process through SAP Business One.

What about levels of return on investment? Have you calculated when this will be realized?

We’ve been using SAP Business One for around four years now and have probably witnessed a return on investment now. We’ve got 71 users who use SAP Business One on a daily basis – with some of these having remote access.

How would you describe the customer service provided by IIS?

It’s always been good. If there’s ever a problem, you can call up the helpdesk, speak to one of the support team and they’ll sort out the issue. But, touch wood, we haven’t had many issues in the years we’ve been using SAP Business One.